Wattpad
Wattpad describes itself as “the best place to discover and share stories.” It's a YouTube for electronic text stories. The content includes work by undiscovered and published writers. Delivery emphasizes the mobile phone platform, using the free Freda ebook reader. According to Wattpad founder and CEO Ivan Yuen, "marketers can currently upload material for reading by mobile users at no charge". About nine in 10 users are readers rather than writers. Around four in ten users are U.S. based; traffic also comes from the U.K., Canada, the Philippines, Australia, and more. Approximately 75 percent of users access the site through their mobile device. The most popular genres on Wattpad.com and the Wattpad mobile app include Romance, Paranormal, Teen Fiction, and Fan Fiction. The site is also home to Poetry, Humor, Science Fiction, Thriller, and others. Origin and development According to Allen Lau, Wattpad originated in 2006, as the result of a collaboration between himself and CTO Ivan Yuen. In February 2007, Wattpad announced the addition of over 17,000 eBooks from Project Gutenberg making them available to mobile users. According to a June 2009 Wattpad press release, the mobile application had been downloaded over 5 million times. In March 2009, an iPhone version was released. This was followed by the launch on BlackBerry App World in April 2009, Google Android in June 2009 and Apple iPad in April 2010. Copyright violation controversy Some of the large volume of user-uploaded material hosted on Wattpad is copyrighted material created by authors who did not grant republication rights. In May 2009, an article in the New York Times noted, "Sites like Scribd and Wattpad, which invite users to upload documents like college theses and self-published novels, have been the target of industry grumbling in recent weeks, as illegal reproductions of popular titles have turned up on them". Calling Wattpad a site that "furnishes iPhone with bootleg books," Bill Ray of The Register says the company "hides behind safe-harbour rules, promising to remove content as soon as notified by the owners". The Wattpad website notes, "We do not welcome upload of material that violate its copyright terms," but also states "it is simply not possible to screen and verify all posted content." In response to industry criticism, in April 2009 (before the publication of the New York Times article that named Wattpad as a vehicle for user-generated ebook piracy) Wattpad announced an "Authors In Charge" program, designed to allow authors or their representatives to identify and directly remove infringing content from the site, but this program is designed specifically for "authors with published books for sale. Recent expansion and funding In 2011, Wattpad announced that it received $3.5M in total funding from its current investors, and from W Media Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, and Union Square Ventures, which is an early investor in "Twitter, Tumblr and other social-media success stories." In December 2011, Toronto-based Wattpad was selected as the hottest Digital Media company in the country at the Canadian Innovation Exchange. In the same year, co-founder and CTO Ivan Yuen was also recognized as a top Canadian entrepreneur at the Impact Infused Awards, sponsored by Deloitte. New authors and teens The most frequently voted stories (every day) appear on the "What's Hot List". These stats change daily, due to reads and votes by other users. According to the profiles visible on the site, many of these authors are teenagers. Wattpad also has a Featured Story list, which promotes content reviewed and approved by Staff and an editorial review board. Many of these featured stories are written by self-published and professional writers from different genres. Contests Wattpad holds several smaller contests a year and one major one. The large annual contest is called "The Watty Awards". In 2011, The Watty Awards introduced three entry levels (Popular, On The Rise, and Undiscovered) to allow greater chances of winning for every type of writer. Contests are open to anyone who has a Wattpad account. During the summer of 2012, Wattpad in collaboration with Margaret Atwood, Canadian poet/novelist/literary critic, held the "Attys"; the first major poetry contest offering a chance to poets on Wattpad to compete against each other in one of two categories, either as an "Enthusiast" or a "Competitor".